The Savage Detectives (54 page)

And then we heard a shout, not an inarticulate howl but words, something like hey, you up there, hey, you bastards, and although a few fantasists said that it must be the devil, who, still unsated, wanted to carry off someone else, the rest of us crowded around the edge of the pit and saw the light of the watchman's flashlight, a beam like a firefly lost in the darkness of the mind of Polyphemus, and we asked the light whether it was all right but all the voice behind the light said was I'm fine, I'm going to toss the rope up to you, and we heard a scarcely perceptible noise against the walls of the pit, and after several failed attempts the voice said throw me another rope, and a little later we pulled up the boy who had disappeared, roped around the waist and under the armpits. His unexpected appearance was celebrated with tears and laughter, and when we had untied the boy we threw the rope down and the watchman came up, and the rest of that night, I remember this now that I have nothing to look forward to, was one long party,
O quantum caliginis mentibus nostris obicit magna felicitas
, a Galician party in the mountains, since the campers were Galician civil servants or office workers, and I hailed from those lands too, and the watchman, whom they called the Chilean, since that was his nationality, was also descended from hardworking Galicians, as indicated by his last name, Belano.

In the two further days that I spent there, the watchman and I had long conversations, and above all I was able to share my literary qualms and adventures with him. Then I returned to Barcelona and that was the last I heard of him until he showed up at my office two years later. As is always the way in these cases, he was short of money and out of work, so after taking a good look at him and wondering to myself whether I should kick him out,
supremum vale
, or toss him a line, I settled on the latter option, and told him that for now I could assign him a few reviews for the law school journal, whose literary pages I edited, and later we would see. Then I gave him a copy of my most recent book of poetry and let him know that he should limit himself to reviewing verse, since the fiction reviews were penned by my colleague Jaume Josep, a divorce expert and homosexual of long standing, known by the hordes of ass peddlers in the dives off the Ramblas as the Little Martyr, in reference to his shortness and his weakness for rough trade.

I think it's fair to say that I detected some disappointment in his face, possibly because he was hoping to publish in my literary magazine, which was more than I could offer him just then, since the caliber of the writers was incredibly high. Time hadn't passed for nothing. The elite of the Barcelona literary world, the crème de la crème of the poetry world, were making appearances in my magazine, and there could be no question of me turning soft overnight simply because of two summer days of friendship and an essentially superficial exchange of ideas.
Discat servire glorians ad alta venire
.

That was the beginning, one might say, of the second stage of my relationship with Arturo Belano. I saw him once a month, at my office, where I tended to my literary obligations while dealing with various legal cases, and where (these were different times) the most cultivated and renowned writers and poets of Spain and even Latin America would turn up, the latter stopping by to pay their respects on their way through town. On one occasion or another, I remember that Belano ran into some contributors to the magazine and a guest or two of mine, and that those encounters were less satisfactory than I might have liked. But distracted as I was by work and pleasure, I never bothered to take this up with him, nor did I heed the background noise engendered by such encounters, a noise like a convoy of cars, a swarm of motorcycles, the traffic in hotel parking lots, a noise that was saying be careful, Xosé, live your life, take care of your body, time is short, glory fleeting. In my ignorance I failed to decipher the message or assumed it was meant for him, not me, that noise of impending doom, of something lost in the vastness of Barcelona. These words didn't concern me, I thought they had nothing to do with me but with him, when in reality they were written expressly for me.
Fortuna rerum humanarum domina
.

In some ways, Belano's encounters with the contributors to my magazine weren't devoid of a certain appeal. Once, one of my boys (who later gave up writing and is now quite successfully involved in politics) wanted to hit him. He wasn't serious, of course, although one never knows for sure, but the point is that Belano pretended not to notice: I think he asked something like whether my contributor knew karate (he was a black belt) and then claimed to have a migraine and refused to fight. On such occasions I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I would say: come on, Belano, defend your opinions, argue, stand up to the literary elite,
sine dolo
, and he would say that he had a headache, laugh, ask me to pay him for his monthly law journal assignment, and leave with his tail between his legs.

I should have mistrusted that tail between the legs. I should have thought: what does that tail between the legs mean,
sine ira et studio
. I should have asked myself which animals have tails. I should have consulted books and guides and I should have correctly identified the bushy tail that bristled between the legs of the ex-watchman of the Castroverde campground.

But I didn't, and I kept living.
Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum
. One day I was at my older daughter's apartment and I heard noises. I have a key, of course: as a matter of fact, it's the apartment where the four of us (my wife, my two daughters, and I) lived before the divorce. After the divorce I bought myself a house in Sarriá, my wife bought herself a penthouse in Plaza Molina where she went to live with my younger daughter, and I decided to give our former apartment to my older daughter, who is herself a poet like me and the main contributor to my magazine. As I was saying, I had a key, although I didn't visit very often, basically just to pick up a book or because the magazine's board meetings were held there. So I went in and I heard noises. Discreetly, as befits a father and a modern man, I peeked into the living room. I didn't see anyone there. The noises were coming from down the hallway.
Non
vis esse iracundus? Ne fueris curiosus
, I repeated to myself a few times. And yet I kept creeping around my old apartment. I passed my daughter's room and looked in: nobody was there. I kept walking on tiptoe. Though it was late morning, the apartment was dark. I didn't turn on the light. The noises, I realized then, were coming from the room that used to be mine, a room that also happens to be just as my wife and I left it. I opened the door partway and saw my older daughter in Belano's arms. What he was doing to her struck me as indescribable, at first glance at least. He was dragging her back and forth across the huge expanse of my bed, riding her, rolling her over and over, all in the midst of a hideous series of moans, bellows, brayings, cooings, and obscene noises that gave me goose bumps.
Mille modi Veneris
, I recalled with Ovid, but this was too much. Still, I didn't cross the threshold, standing there frozen, silent, spellbound, as if I were suddenly back at the Castroverde campground and the neo-Galician watchman had gone down into the chasm again and the office workers and I were once more at the mouth of hell.
Magna res est vocis et silentii tempora nosse
. I said nothing. Keeping quiet, I left the way I'd come in. And yet I wasn't able to go far from my old apartment, my daughter's apartment, and my steps led me to a neighborhood café that someone, almost certainly its new owner, had turned into a much more modern place, with shiny plastic chairs and tables. There I ordered a coffee and sat to contemplate the situation. Visions of my daughter behaving like a dog kept coming to me in waves, and each wave left me drenched in sweat, as if I had a fever, so after I finished my coffee I ordered a cognac to see whether something stronger would settle me down. Finally, by the third cognac, I pulled myself together.
Post vinum verba, post imbrem nascitur herba
.

What was born in me, however, wasn't words or poetry, not even a single solitary line, but a great desire for revenge, the determination to get my own back, the firm resolve to make that third-rate Julien Sorel pay for his insolence and gall.
Prima cratera ad sitim pertinet, secunda ad hilaritatem, tertia ad voluptatem, quarta ad insaniam
. The fourth cup brings madness, said Apuleius, and that was what I needed. I realized it at that moment with a clarity that seems touching to me now. The waitress, a girl my daughter's age, was watching me from the other side of the counter. Across from her, having a soda, was a woman who worked as a door-to-door pollster. The two of them were talking animatedly, although from time to time the waitress would turn her gaze in my direction. I raised my hand and ordered a fourth cognac. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the waitress looked sympathetic.

I decided to crush Arturo Belano like a cockroach. For two weeks, unhinged and unbalanced, I would show up at my old apartment, my daughter's apartment, at odd hours. Four times I caught them together again. Twice they were in my bedroom, once they were in my daughter's bedroom, and once they were in the master bathroom. This last time I wasn't able to spy on them, although I could hear them, but the other three times I could see with my own eyes the terrible acts to which they abandoned themselves fervently, recklessly, shamelessly.
Amor tussisque non caelatur
: neither love nor a cough can be concealed. But was it love that they felt for each other? I asked myself more than once, especially as I snuck feverishly out of my apartment after those unspeakable acts that I was obliged to witness as if by a mysterious force. Was it love that Belano felt for my daughter? Was it love that my daughter felt for that cheap imitation of Julien Sorel?
Qui non zelat, non amat
, I said or whispered to myself when it occurred to me, in a burst of clarity, that my behavior was more like that of a jealous lover than a strict father. And yet I wasn't a jealous lover. What was it I felt, then?
Amantes, amentes
. Lovers, lunatics,
dixit
Plato.

As a precautionary measure, I decided to sound them out, to give them one last chance, in my own way. As I feared, my daughter was in love with the Chilean. Are you sure? I asked her. Of course I'm sure, she answered. And what do the two of you plan to do? Nothing, Dad, said my daughter, who bore no resemblance to me in these matters, being in fact almost the complete opposite. She'd turned out a pragmatist like her mother. A little later I spoke to Belano. He came to my office, as he did each month, to deliver a poetry review for the law school journal and collect his payment. So, Belano, I said when I had him in front of me, sitting in a low chair, crushed beneath the legal heft of my diplomas and the burnished weight of the silver-framed photographs of great poets that adorned my sturdy ten-by-five-foot oak table. I think it's time, I said, for you to make the leap. He looked at me blankly. The qualitative leap, I said. After a moment in which we were both silent, I explained what I meant. I wanted him (it was my wish, I said) to make the move from reviewer for the law school magazine to regular contributor to my magazine. I think his only commentary was a rather subdued "wow." As you'll understand, I explained, this is a great responsibility I've assumed. The magazine is gaining in reputation every day. Its contributors include many distinguished Spanish and Latin American poets. You read it, I assume, so you'll have noticed that we've published Pepe de Dios, Ernestina Buscarraons, and Manolo Garcidiego Hijares, not to mention the young blades who make up our team of regular contributors: Gabriel Cataluña, who bids fair to become the great bilingual poet we've all been waiting for, Rafael Logroño, an extremely young but staggeringly powerful poet, Ismael Sevilla, meticulous and elegant, Ezequiel Valencia, a stylist of blazing warmth and cool intelligence capable of composing the most rabidly modern sonnets in Spain today, and last but not least, of course, our two gladiators of poetry criticism, Beni Algeciras, almost always ruthless, and Toni Melilla, professor at the Autónoma and an expert in the poetry of the 1950s. All of them men, I said in conclusion, whom I have the honor to lead and whose names are destined to shine in bronze letters in the literature of this country (the motherland, as you people say) that has opened its arms to you, and in whose company you'll work.

Then I was silent and we watched each other for a while, or rather I watched him, searching his face for any sign that would give away what was going on inside his head, and Belano looked at my pictures, my objets d'art, my diplomas, my paintings, my collection of handcuffs and shackles mostly dating from before 1940 (it was a collection to which my clients usually reacted with interest and a tinge of fear, my legal colleagues with some tasteless joke or remark, and the poets who visited me with admiring fascination), the spines of the few carefully chosen books that I keep in my office, most of them first editions of the nineteenth-century Spanish Romantics. As I was saying, his gaze slithered over my possessions like a small and highly nervous rat. What do you think? I blurted out. Then he looked at me and I realized abruptly that my proposal had fallen on fallow ground. Belano asked me how much I planned to pay him. I looked at him and didn't answer. The arriviste was already calculating his take. He looked at me, waiting for my answer. I watched him, poker-faced. He asked in a stammer whether the pay would be the same as for the law school journal. I sighed.
Emere oportet, quem tibi oboedire velis
. His gaze was clearly that of a frightened rat. I don't pay, I said. Only the greats, the big names, the names with clout. For now, you'll only be assigned a few reviews. Then he moved his head, as if he were reciting:
O cives, cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus
post nummos
. After that he said that he would think about it, and he left. When he closed the door I buried my head in my hands and remained like that for a while, thinking. Deep down I didn't want to hurt him.